May Week 1 - Self Deception

Rock of Gibraltar

Last week, we talked a lot about how easy it is to tell ourselves that our motives are right only to find that we were deceiving ourselves and our motives were more selfish then we thought. We discussed evidence of this in the fruits and actions of Cortez and Psyche and even the Catholic Church towards Galileo. Jordan mentioned that it is troubling to think about the different ways we may be deceiving ourselves. We talked a little about how to avoid it.

As a follow up to this discussion, our reading and writing assignment for the week will explore this question further to help us be more honest with ourselves (exciting right?!)

One way to look at ways we deceive ourselves is to examine why we we are not doing what we should or why are doing what we shouldn't. This gives us insight into the things we say to ourselves to justify our behavior. It is an interesting exercise!

So here is the assignment for the week:

1. If you did not comment on other's posts last week or write a post yourself, make sure you do that first.
2. Read and takes notes on: Becoming Men and Women of Integrity by Tad Callister
3. Read For the Strength of Youth and write down each piece of counsel that you are living well and that you are not (you can make two columns or highlight them in different colors or whatever works for you)
4. Go back and look at what you are not wholly living and write down your reasons for why you are not (you wont be asked to share these!)
5. Look back through your reasons and see if you gain any insight to ways you deceive yourself  (don't worry, we probably all have favorite ways we deceive ourselves) - consider questions such as: What triggers self-deception? Does Satan counterfeit personal revelation if we are self-deceived when we receive it? How can we know the difference? How can we avoid self-deception altogether? How do we know we are avoiding it? You may want to do additional research on your own if you would like greater insight into these questions or others you may have.
6. From the insight you gain, create a post/song/story/poem/video/etc that may help others from what you learned. It would be awesome if you could post a question, either in your post or under other people's posts to seek greater clarity (remember to do this early enough in the week so that people are not up late on Thursday night!)
7. Comment on each other's posts by Thursday night.
8. Find a Copy of Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis - we will start reading this next week.

I am excited about doing this assignment myself. I keep getting stalled in some of my goals and I think this will help me discover some of the lies that keep me from progressing! I hope you find it meaningful and well worth your time!